Friday, August 17, 2018

Just thought I would take a little time to let you aware of some changes that may/are coming to Persona themes. Right now they are trying to get the themes switched over to the Add-Ons. I have submitted a couple and had a hard time doing so. They take much longer to get reviewed and are not as easy to preview as they are now. I am hoping that the old way will be continued but progress...you know progress is good! Right? Sometimes the old way is easier and better, but I don't know if we will be able to keep the old way. You can go to my profile and see the way the old themes show up and the way the new ones show up as Add-Ons.

We have had a very warm, dry summer. And now we have smoke from forest fires making the air a bit hard to breathe. It is supposed to get a bit better when the sea breeze starts this week end so we shall see.

I was so pleased that I got to see my sister and brother-in-law last weekend. They were up for a neice's wedding. We didn't go to the wedding because of my knee and I really hated not being able to be there. I still haven't gone to the Dr. about it but it seems to be a tad better as long as I don't step on rough ground.

We are spending time with some grand kids this week end. Our daughter, grand daughter and myself are going to do our annual dill pickling. We have so much fun working together, laughing and spending the time together, plus we end up with lots of dill pickles using my Grandmother's recipe. The recipe make the best, crispiest, hottest pickles ever! Of course we add a bit more red peppers in some jars...so you get your choice. We are going to open the last jar we made last year where we added the left over peppers and even some ghost pepper. May have to have an extra beer or glass of wine after we open them!

I will sign off for now and get back soon. Hope you all have a great week end. Summer is leaving us quicker than I like but I am sure kids are getting excited about going back to school.

Wednesday, August 1, 2018

August...Wow, summer is almost over and we are headed for fall. We have had wonderful hot summer weather and I have loved it. Lots of fires, though. So I know we need rain. We are way behind on rain this year. Since May we have had very little rain.

My brother and his wife just got sent to the Redding, CA fire. They are on a support team for forest fires and had tried to take this summer off because they had a grandson high school graduation, a grand daughter college graduation and a grand daughter's wedding and showers this summer. I am sure they will be able to get back for the wedding. They got to attend the graduations, anyway. My husband would love to be fighting fire...he really misses it.

I doubt if the majority of you have heard about our poor Orca mother. J35, or Tahlequah, gave birth to the calf which only lived for 30 minutes. She has refused to let go of it ever since, carrying the infant either by one fin, or pushing it through the water on her head. They don't know if she is getting enough to eat or not. There are only 75 members of the endangered family of southern resident orca whales. J Pod, the mother's clan has been staying with her and has turned out in force, with more members of the pod staying with her every day. There is a crew of people monitoring her all the time, keeping boats away from the pod. How can you not feel sad for this grieving mother?

I also watched the poor great grandfather that lost his wife and 2 great grandchildren in the Carr Fire in CA. I tear up every time I see the interview with him. I can not imaging the guilt and grief he must be feeling.

I have been having a good summer and really hate to see it end. My knee is still bothering me a lot and I imagine I will end up and have to go to the Dr. but will wait as long as I can. I tried 3 different braces and ended up using my old one. I ordered one similar but it isn't as good as the old one. Looks a lot better though!

My husband went up in the mountains with our oldest son and our oldest great grandson today. He loves going out with "the boys" and it gets him away from home for awhile. He is going on 83 and I really don't like him going alone but he does once in awhile.

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(A little about me)

I once said I never wanted a computer, BUT...one of my grandson's is in the IT Department at WWU and installed Firefox when he built my desktop computer. I really like it and won't use any other browser now. It is safe, fast and has tons of extensions to make it easy for your browsing. One of the add ons they have available are themes which they used to call Personas. They had been called Personas for several years and became very popular, but someone at Mozilla got the bright idea to change the name. Whatever you want to call them they are still a fun quick way to make your browser personal. You can find my Persona/Theme designs at:https://www.getpersonas.com/en-US/gallery/Designer/MaDonna

I make desktop wallpaper designs to match many of my themes, which you can use as background themes for GMail. You can also use them as a wallpaper for your cell phone. You can find my desktop wallpaper designs at: http://my.desktopnexus.com/MaDonnas/uploads/

I have been making theme designs for my own personal Firefox ever since it was installed. Then it was opened so you could submit designs for approval in 2008. My design called Sunset Over Water had over a million and a half people using it at one time. It is from a photo I took off Chuckanut Drive on our way home from a wedding.

I have always been interested in design. When I was a little girl I designed clothing for my paper dolls. Then designed and made clothes for my regular dolls. I made most of my own clothing in high school. When I was older I designed, sewed and made our 3 kids clothing. When they got married and started having babies I made tons of clothes for our 7 grand kids. I decided to sell some of my designs. Fibromyalgia decided to put a stop to that. Sewing for hours a day was just too much.

I am a bit of an over-achiever and when I start something, I don't know when to quit! I have done a little bit of sewing for our great grand kids, but I know I have a limit and when to stop.

I used to design and make jewelry and sold at bazaars which was a lot of fun.

I work on themes and desktop wallpaper designs almost every day and have enjoyed hearing from people all over the world.

I was asked to design themes for Brand Thunder. They have theme designs for people that use Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari and also Firefox. In 2012 I won a Nexus 7 tablet on a pop culture contest they held. They have changed their format so I don't make designs for them anymore.

I now use Photoshop Elements to make my designs. It is a very complicated program to use, especially at my age of almost 80.

Thank you all for your comments and using my designs. I will keep making them as long as I can and people enjoy using them.

A BIT MORE!

I love nature and the beauty of the Pacific Northwest, the animals
that roam our forests and back yards. That is the reason most of my
designs are nature based. I love going up into the mountains with my
husband of 61 years. He knows the mountains well and can take me places
where I can take photos I can use for both Persona designs and
wallpapers. It is getting harder and harder for me to take really good scenic shots, though, because of my age!

We have 3 grown children, 6 grandsons, 1 granddaughter, 4 great
grandsons and 1 great granddaughter. My family is the most important part of my life. I don't
get to see my brother or sister as much as I would like as we all live
in different states and I am not a traveler. My family moved a lot when I
was growing up and I pretty much like to just stay put now.

I loved riding dirt bikes and ATV's. I used to ride my Yamaha dirt bike in poker runs, enduro's and motocross and have a lot of trophies to show for it. And one bad knee after two surgeries! I rode dirt bikes before they had motocross gear for women. Had to buy gear for boys! But my most favorite thing was riding my Kawasaki 454 LTD road bike. My husband had a 454, too and we would go on cross country trips, especially to Winthrop, WA. My last year to ride was when I was 71 years old and it was hard to give up but I knew my strength wasn't up to it anymore. Summer isn't quite as much fun now because I can't ride, but I have so many wonderful memories.

I was born and raised a farm girl. In the early 1990's my husband and I started a group to protect the 500+ acre ranch close to us. A Japanese company had purchased it and wanted to build a development with over 2000 houses. Over 600 people from the community joined our group and we were successful in stopping the development. But instead of farming it like it should be, they built a golf course! We still do all we can to help preserve the farm land.

I have been doing a bit of freelance work, such as designing book covers, business cards, calenders, etc. It all keeps me very, very busy. Plus getting older it doesn't get any easier.